Entry requirements to the mentoring scheme

The mentoring scheme is not easy; it will push you to the limits of your current proofreading or copy-editing knowledge, and (we hope) beyond. It will make you think; it will make you research editorial problems that might never have occurred to you; it will start to demonstrate what it is to work on a difficult task to a deadline. It will undoubtedly take up quite a bit of your time, and of course it will take up your mentor’s time when they get to see your returned assignments.

All of this means that it is in nobody’s interest for someone to start the mentoring scheme and then find themselves out of their depth. That would mean time, money and self-confidence down the drain. So the entry requirements to mentoring are fairly rigid, although in exceptional circumstances (which you would have to explain persuasively and in some detail), the mentoring director can allow someone to join the scheme even without some of the requirements listed below.

Ideally, you should be able to supply evidence that you have been assessed as ready to undertake mentoring, and normally you should have taken at least two relevant courses, unless you can show one of these three exceptions:

Code

Training

1

PTC Basic Proofreading (BP), distinction

2

SfEP P3, assessed ‘very good’

3

SfEP CE3, assessed ‘very good’

If your training does not include one of these assessments, then you will need to show evidence of having taken two courses, at least one of which should be assessed: